Ranking the top 15 armor mods in Destiny 2 is tricky. There are so many different armor mods out there, most of which are great in certain contexts. Destiny 2 is all about build crafting these days, so any mod can be good if you build around it right. Still, some can pretty confidently be described as “better than most”, and those kinds of mods are what populate this list.
These top 15 armor mods aren’t ranked in any particular order. Number one is no better than number 15 – it’s all subjective. However, I’m confident in saying that they’re 15 of the stronger mods in the META overall. If you disagree with any of my choices – that’s okay. As I said, this is subjective, and I’m approaching the list as a Hunter main. Warlocks and Titans may know about a few niche perks that are incredibly on their mains but don’t suit Hunters as well.
Destiny 2 Top 15 Armor Mods
15 – Elemental Ordinance
Elemental Ordinance is one of Destiny 2’s best go-to well generation mods. Even builds that don’t focus on grenades use it to generate wells, highlighting how effective it is.
Rather than relying on RNG spawns like most other well generation mods, this guarantees you a well on a grenade kill – and your grenades will almost always kill something, even if that something is just a Thrall.
On top of that, Elemental Ordinance has no element type – so it fits into any build regardless of what subclass you’re using.
14 – Elemental Shards
Isolated, this is arguably the best Elemental Well armor mod in all of Destiny 2. Its effect is simple – it makes your Stasis Shards act as Wells. This is phenomenal for all classes, but it’s borderline broken on Hunter.
The real benefit to this mod is that your Shards get to benefit from your Stasis build. For example, tracking shards fragment here is essentially a built-in Seeking Wells mod without the need to take up a mod slot. Combine that with all the other buffs your Shards can give you, and you’ve just got a seriously busted build – especially with how easy it is to generate Shards in the first place.
If you’re running a Stasis build, you need to be running this mod – period.
13 – Font of Might
Font of Might goes hand-in-hand with Elemental Shards to create one of the best builds in all of Destiny 2 – the Ager’s Sceptre Hunter build. Although, it’s incredibly powerful in pretty much any other type of Well build, too.
Font of Might gives you a 25% buff to weapon damage after you pick up an Elemental Well, provided your weapon has the same element as the Well you picked up. This stacks with every other buff in the game, and it lasts for 10 seconds. Why this is so strong should be pretty self-explanatory. It’s a staple in almost all Well builds and is one of the most reliable damage buffs in the entire game.
12 – Heavy Handed
Heavy Handed is our first Charged with Light mod on this list – and my personal favorite mod in this entire Destiny 2 top 15 armor mods list. Heavy Handed is the melee version of Firepower. When you use your melee ability while Charged with Light, you’ll consume a stack of CWL in exchange for some of that melee energy back. This stacks with melee energy arms mod.
Unlike Firepower, which only refunds you 15% of your grenade energy (hence not including it on this list), Heavy Handed gives you back 50% of your melee. When you use this with arms mod, you practically get all of your melee energy back immediately – creating some broken gameplay loops.
11 – Powerful Friends
Powerful Friends makes nearby allies become Charged with Light any time you become Charged with Light. Back in the CWL META, this effect was great. These days, though, everyone is running Wells – so it’s pretty pointless.
However, when it’s slotted into an armor piece with another Arc mod, it gives you +20 Mobility. This is busted and makes getting triple 100 on your builds so much easier, especially given that it only costs four energy.
It doesn’t offer as much utility as the rest of the Destiny 2 armor mods on this list – but that doesn’t matter. The 20 extra Mobility alone is enough to make it one of the better mods in the game.
10 – Seeking Wells
I’ve already mentioned how Elemental Shards is so powerful because it effectively comes with Seeking Wells built in, so Seeking Wells itself being on this list just highlights how powerful that really is.
The mods effect is simple – it makes Elemental Wells you generate move towards you – meaning you don’t need to go collect them yourself.
On lower difficulties, this isn’t the biggest thing in the world. On higher difficulties, though, it can make or break your Wells build. It opens up your movement range by a substantial amount and lets you claim those Wells while still remaining relatively safe from damage.
It’s not a staple by any means – but it’s definitely one to consider if you’re trying to put together a build for Master or Grandmaster level content.
9 – Well of Life
Well of Life is busted in this META. It forces your health to regenerate whenever you pick up a Solar Elemental Well, and it just so happens that Solar wells are the easiest to spawn on mass.
What it does is trigger your health regeneration every time you pick up a Solar elemental well. That explanation alone should be all you need to recognize just how strong this mod is.
With the right build, like Solar Titan Hammer builds, this mod can practically make you invincible. It’s arguably the best mod not just in the META currently, but that we’ve ever gotten in Destiny 2. It carries, regardless of difficulty or activity.
8 – Well of Tenacity
Well of Tenacity is an inferior version of Well of Life, but it’s still a staple in most Void well builds. Rather than start health regeneration on pickup, it reduces the amount of damage you take for a short period of time.
Effects like this are particularly potent on Elemental Wells due to their inherently risky nature. Without Seeking Wells, you need to go and manually collect them, so getting damage resistance during this process helps a whole lot.
Well of Tenacity isn’t too great on its own – but it does supplement your wells enough to make it worth using.
7 – Ammo Finder Mods
This is one of the few non-combat-style mods on this list. That being said, these mods are staple on every kind of build, on every kind of class, on every difficulty. Even players that don’t use mods effectively tend to run these.
If you somehow don’t know what they do, they simply increase the drop rate for ammo of the weapon that the mod mentions. For example, Linear Fusion Rifle Ammo Finder will increase the drop rate of heavy ammo while you have a Linear in your heavy slot.
This increase is substantial, too. There’s a noticeable difference between running this mod, and not running it, and that difference can make or break some of the hardest encounters in the game.
6 – Supercharged
Supercharged is simple. It lets you have two more stacks of Charged with Light, up to five stacks. It’s the big brother to Charged Light, which only lets you have one more stack instead of two.
If you’re running a pure Charged with Light build, this is pretty much mandatory, regardless of what other mods you’re using.
Some CWL mods are more powerful the more stacks you have, while others can activate more often the more stacks you have, both are just as important as each other, hence why you want to be able to hoard as many stacks as possible at any given time.
5 – Explosive Wellmaker
Explosive Wellmaker often goes hand in hand with Well of Life. It spawns a well whenever you kill an enemy with explosive damage. Given that this mod deal with Solar, that’ll be often.
Grenades, melees, and a whole lot of weapons are capable of activating this mod consistently – making it easily the best well generation mod in the entire game.
If you want to see just how busted this one is, throw it on with a Sunshot and go to Shuro Chi. You’ll see exactly what I mean.
4 – Elemental Charge
Elemental Charge bridges the gap between Charged with Light and Elemental Wells, single-handedly making hybrid builds possible in the META.
The mods effect is simple. Whenever you pick up an Elemental Well, you become Charged with Light. This lets you use your wells to generate both builds effects, turning your wells into overpowered buff machines.
With this mod, you enable your wells to do things like heal you, give you more weapon damage, give you faster super regen, and give you half your melee energy back the next time you use your melee, all whenever you pick just one up. That’s beyond strong by any standards.
3 – Elemental Time Dilation
Elemental Time Dilation is a mod that I’ve not used a lot of myself, but its value of it can’t really be questioned.
It enables the rest of your well mods that grant time-limited effects to have extended duration depending on how many copies of that mod you have equipped. This makes it quite a unique mod, but one capable of honing in on specific abilities, rather than building around multiple buffs.
You can use it to enable Font of Might to last much longer – focusing on maintaining that pure weapon damage as opposed to the other utility wells have to offer.
It’s not for every build, but that doesn’t make it any less strong.
2 – Utility Kickstart
Utility Kickstart is the second non-combat-style mod on this list. It’s a Stasis class item mod that partially refunds your class ability whenever you use it. However, unlike a lot of other mods of this nature – this one stacks.
As a Hunter main, Utility Kickstart is a lot more important to me than it would be other classes. A lot of Hunter builds revolve around your dodge in some capacity, including my main Void Invisibility build.
Utility Kickstart lets you keep ridiculous uptime on your class ability, especially if you supplement it with other mods. Sure, it’s not too important for Warlocks and Titans, but all Hunters should be running at least one copy of it.
1 – Stat Mods
These last mod on this list also just so happens to be a collection of non-combat-style mods, but you really can’t refute their importance and power.
Your stat mods, whether they’re minor or major, play a roll in almost every build imaginable, especially for players that don’t know much about armor mods to begin with. They’re what enable triple 100 builds to exist, and supplement your armor to get your stats to whatever breakpoint levels you need them to be at.
It would be unreasonably difficult to get 100 in even one stat without them – they’re that important and irreplaceable. Sure, you might only have room for four of them instead of five in your build, but you’ll always be running a handful.
They might not be flashy or overpowered like the other mods on this top 15 armor mods list, but they’re vital to the foundation of build crafting in Destiny 2.
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Published: Nov 30, 2022 08:06 am